Abstract
The invention of this vital instrument which measures the atmospheric pressure or “weight” was another product of seventeenth-century investigations. Before discussing its early development, however, it might be appropriate to consider the basic concept of the barometer—the idea that air has weight.
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References
A.C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo—The History of Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 238.
L.F. Kaemtz, A Complete Course in Meteorology trans. C.V. Walker (London: Hippolyte Bailliere, 1845), p. 232.
Galileo, Le opere, ed. nat. (Florence: 1884), 4:167.
Galileo, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, trans. Henry Crew and Alfonso DeSalvio (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914), pp. 79–83.
Harvey A. Zinszer, “Meteorological Mileposts,” Scientific Monthly 58 (1944): 261.
E. Saul, An Account of the Barometer (London: 1730), pp. 4–5.
Ibid., p. 5.
Blaise Pascal, The Physical Treatise of Pascal, trans. I.H.B. and A.G.H. Spiers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), p. 166.
René Descartes, Ouevres de Descartes, ed. Chas. Adam et Paul Tannery (Paris: 1897), 1:205–208.
According to Descartes, a vortex was a collection of particles of very subtle matter endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis which is also the axis of a sun or a planet. He attempted to account for the formation of the universe, and the movements of the bodies composing it, by a theory of vortices. For a concise discussion of this theory of vortices, see “Descartes,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911), 7: 86.
The aether was supposed to be such a subtle matter that it could penetrate the pores of the tube.
E. Gerland, “Report of the International Meteorological Congress Held at Chicago, Ill., August 21–24, 1893,” ed. O.L. Fassig, U.S. Weather Bureau Bulletin, No. 11, Part 3 (Washington, D.C.: 1896): 690.
Descartes, op. cit., (1903 ed.), 5:99.
W.E.K. Middleton. The History of the Barometer (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), p. 46.
For a thorough discussion of what little is known concerning Berti’s work, see W.E.K. Middleton, The History of the Barometer (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), pp. 10–18.
Florian Cajori, A History of Physics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906), p. 65.
Ibid.
For a complete and excellent discussion on the development of the barometer, see W.E.K. Middleton, The History of the Barometer (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964).
Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London: 1665). The wheel barometer is described in the Preface of this work.
Hooke,“ ”Self-registering instrument,“ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh 15 (1678): 503. See also William Ellis, ”Brief Historical Account of the Barometer,“ Quart. Jour. of the Roy. Meteor. Soc. 12 (1886): 149.
Middleton, op. cit., p. 71.
Ibid., p. 75.
Robert Boyle, Continuation of New Experiments (1969) pp. 68–73.
Phil. Trans. 7 (1672): 5027–30.
Blaise Pascal, Traitez de l’equilibre des liqueurs, 2nd ed. (Paris: 1698), pp. 207–208.
Thomas Birch, History of the Royal Society (London: 1756), 2: 298.
Joachim D’Alencé, Curieux traité de mathematique ou par le mouyen de trois instruments, a sauvoir, du barometre, du thermometre, du notiometre, du hygiometrechrw(133), (Paris: 1713), pp. 19–20.
Christian Huygens, Oeuvres Completes De Christiaan Huygens, (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1897), 7:238–242.
Middleton, op. cit., pp. 91–92.
Ibid., pp. 110–111.
Johann Bernoulli’s treatise, “Le baromètre in équerre,” is given in Jean De Luc, Recherches sur Les Modifications de L’Atmosphere, (Paris: 1784), 1:29–36. This type of instrument had previously been proposed by J. Dominic Cassini. See Middleton, op. cit., pp. 115–116.
See the note by the Abbé de la Caille in Pierre Bouguer’s posthumous Traite d’Optique (Paris: 1760), p. 323.
Jean De Luc, Recherches sur les modifications de l’atmosphere, 2nd ed., (Paris: 1784), 2:3–5.
A Wolf, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 18th Century (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1939), p. 306.
Phil. Trans. 66 (1776): 381.
Virorum Celeberr. Got. Gul. Leibnitti et Johan. Bernoulli Commercium Philosophicum et Mathematicum, 2 vols. (Lausanne and Geneva, 1745), p. 368.
Ibid., II, p. 70.
G. Hellmann, Meteorol. Zeits. 8 (1891): 158–159.
Virorum Celeberr…., op. cit., 2:78.
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© 1983 American Meteorological Society
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Frisinger, H.H. (1983). The Barometer. In: The History of Meteorology: to 1800. Meteorological Monographs. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-940033-91-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-940033-91-4_5
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